Back in 1996 when the Internet was still just a few years into the public life, I had a chance to create a series of characters or "emodicons" for an online chat room for the website for the Vodka brand Absolut. I was contracted by the Design Studio in Santa Monica called Troon LTD and I worked in-house for a week to create a series of characters for the site.

The characters were to be done in a Picasso-esque style as abstract art characters, but a bit stereotypical so they could be recognized easily on the screen in the chatr oom format. I had a rocker, a hippie, a bombshell etc.

What I have posted today is the first part in the series of characters I designed for Troon, called "Manhattan", who was a rat pack aging man in his late 50's. I had to develop the basic structure of the character, and then present about 12 basic emotions that would cycle about as you spoke to one another in the chat room online in the bot bar as they called it. "Manhattan" was designed with a widows peak and slick greased back hair with an exaggerated look to his cheeks and lips.

This is the first post in a series on the character designs I did for Absolut, so check back for additional characters to come.

BabelFish Universal Translator Widget

About Me

Trained in Transportation Design at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, I have worked for the past 24 years in every facet of Entertainment Design as Conceptual Designer, up to Design Director. I am currently running my design studio full time out of my home in Littleton, CO.
In the past, I have orchestrated teams as large as 100 on an international level , and as small as a few artists. Art Center gave me the formal training in Industrial Design via sketching and modeling to execute my designs.
The variety within the Entertainment Industry that I have been involved with includes: Television Commercial Set Design, 2D Animation Television Series, Restaurant Design and Illustration, Real Time 3D Interactive Gaming, Online 3D Web interface, CD ROM Magazine Design, Theme Park Attraction Design, and finally ending up in Entertainment based Advertising for Theatrical Films.
I have experience starting up both 2D, and 3D design departments, as well as moving into existing studio infrastructures of operation and working within established systems already in place.